Many companies and other organizations operate computer networks that interconnect numerous computing systems to support their operations, such as with the computing systems being co-located or instead located in multiple distinct geographical locations (e.g., connected via one or more private or public intermediate networks). For example, data centers housing significant numbers of interconnected computing systems have become commonplace, such as private data centers that are operated by and on behalf of a single organization and public data centers that are operated by entities as businesses to provide computing resources to customers. Some public data center operators provide network access, power, and secure installation facilities for hardware owned by various customers, while other public data center operators provide “full service” facilities that also include hardware resources made available for use by their customers. As the scale and scope of typical data centers has increased, the tasks of provisioning, administering, and managing the computing resources have become increasingly complicated.
Examples of such large-scale systems include online merchants and marketplaces, internet service providers, online businesses such as photo processing services, corporate networks, cloud computing services, web-based hosting services, etc. These entities may maintain computing resources in the form of large numbers of computing devices (e.g., thousands of hosts) that are hosted in geographically diverse locations. Web servers backed by distributed systems may provide online marketplaces that offer goods and/or services for sale to consumers. For instance, consumers may visit a merchant's website to view and/or purchase goods and services offered for sale by the merchant (and/or third party merchants). In various cases, such network-based marketplaces may rely on a service-oriented architecture to implement various business processes and other tasks. The service-oriented architecture may be implemented using a distributed system that includes many different computing resources and many different services that interact with one another.
The performance and/or cost of such a system may be influenced by many different configuration options. Systems may be sub-optimally configured by system administrators based on guesswork or incomplete data. Additionally, a configuration may become out-of-date as the components of the system are updated or as usage patterns change.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning “having the potential to”), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning “must”). Similarly, the words “include,” “including,” and “includes” mean “including, but not limited to.”